The US Attacks on Huawei Betray Its Fear of Being Left Behind
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Heroes are forged, not born. During World War II, the famous IL-2 kept flying even after being riddled by anti-aircraft shells and machine-gun fire from other planes. Although badly damaged, it finally made its way back home. Contents December 2018 01. Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable 01 02. Guo Ping's 2019 New Year Message 46 January 2019 03. Ren Zhengfei's International Media Roundtable 56 04. Ren Zhengfei's Chinese Media Roundtable 98 05. Ren Zhengfei's Japanese Media Roundtable 140 06. Liang Hua's International Media Roundtable at 2019 160 Winter Davos February 2019 07. Ren Zhengfei's Interview with the BBC 184 08. Ren Zhengfei's Interview with CBS 240 09. Liang Hua's Interview with The Globe and Mail 284 10. Liang Hua's Canadian Media Roundtable 306 11. Eric Xu's UK Media Roundtable 336 12. Ryan Ding's UK Media Roundtable 368 13. Guo Ping's 2019 MWC Keynote Address 384 14. Guo Ping's Byline in FT 395 15. An Open Letter from Catherine Chen to the US Media 399 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable December 18, 2018 Dongguan, China Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable Ken Hu: Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to our new campus. This is our largest campus in the world. We built our new manufacturing center here. We built our training center here, and our R&D center as well. And we have moved many of our employees from Shenzhen to here in Dongguan. What I have learned is that our employees are so excited about this new campus. I believe in the morning you had a good tour of our technology lab and here in the security lab. The next time you visit here, we'll be happy to take you on a small train tour of our very beautiful campus. This is a lakeside campus, which is very nice. I know that the holiday season is very busy for all of you, so thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us today. This year has been so eventful, hasn't it? So I believe you must have many questions for today's conversation. Before we start, I would like to take this opportunity to give you a very quick update on our business progress this year, and then go on to the Q&A session. This year business has been very good for us. We are pretty sure that, by the end of this year, we will achieve more than 100 billion US dollars in revenue. This is a big milestone in our history. This is the first time our sales revenue has exceeded 100 billion US dollars. For different business groups, we had very 2 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable satisfying growth as well. For example, in our carrier business, which accounts for the largest part in our total portfolio, we secured more than 25 commercial contracts for 5G. Now we rank number one in terms of commercial 5G contracts. This is the result of our far-leading technological innovation across the whole industry. And we have started to ship 5G equipment to the whole world. Actually, we have already shipped more than 10,000 base stations to different markets around the world. Our enterprise business has seen very good progress as well. We secured more and more contracts with leading global companies. This year more than 200 companies in the Fortune 500 selected Huawei as the vendor for their digital transformation. So this is a big step forward as well. And our consumer business. We all know that our smartphones sales are very good. This year, we had a big increase in our sales revenue and shipments with the successful launch of our flagship smartphones, the P20 and Mate 20. These new smartphones bring some amazing functionality to the market, including high quality cameras and particularly artificial intelligence. So in all three business groups we've had very satisfying growth this year. Particularly in October, for 3 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable the first time we announced our full-stack, all- scenario artificial intelligence solution. We have been working with artificial intelligence for around 10 years, and this year we announced our solution – full-stack, all-scenario. We believe that, with this solution, we will be able to make artificial intelligence eventually become a real GPT – a general purpose technology. We're trying to make it more accessible and more affordable for the whole society. And we hope that, in the coming years, we will launch more exciting chipsets, hardware and software solutions for artificial intelligence to help our customers maximize the benefits of this emerging technology. So this is the exciting growth we have achieved this year. Of course, at the same time, we're facing some challenges. You are all aware of the allegations that have been made against Huawei this year. Despite the efforts in some markets to create fear about Huawei, and to use politics to interfere with industry growth, we are proud to say that our customers continue to trust us and recognize our contribution to the industry. They continue to work with us, innovate with us, and build their networks with our innovative technology. We're so grateful for their support. 4 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable When it comes to security issues, as an industry, we believe that we need to talk more about the technology and how to improve. When it comes to security allegations, it's best to let the facts speak for themselves. And the fact is: Huawei's record on security is clean. We believe that cyber security is a global issue. It's an industrywide issue and we need to address it together. Moving forward, we will continue investing in technological innovation, in broadband, cloud, artificial intelligence, and smart devices. And we believe that this continuous investment in technological innovation will help us secure solid growth in the telco sector in the coming year with faster deployment of 5G technology. It will help us to be in a stronger position in the enterprise market with digital transformation across different vertical industries. And particularly, it will help us bring more exciting and innovative devices to consumers. We are going to launch our first 5G smartphone, and we can expect a lot from that. This is just a quick brief on our business growth and business progress. I'm very happy to talk more about that today with all of you, so we have enough time to do the Q&A session. Now, I would like to open the floor for questions. 5 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable Joseph Waring, Mobile World Live 01 Given the allegations and the fear that's being pushed across many governments, what specific actions does Huawei plan to take in the near term or the medium term to alleviate some of that pressure? I know you have your cyber security center in the UK working with the operators there and a number of other similar facilities. Can you talk about that? Ken Hu: We realize that the industry we're in is undergoing faster technological transition periods. Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated. Networks are becoming more open. As a result of this, we definitely notice the increasing interest and care from network operators and regulators and also the general public about the industry. We think this is just normal. When we look at ourselves, as I mentioned just now, Huawei's business has been growing very fast. Our revenue will exceed 100 billion dollars very soon. We're doing business in 170 countries around the world. About half of the Fortune 500 companies are using Huawei products. The majority of the top telecom operators have deployed Huawei's equipment. Our smartphones are being used by hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide. 6 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable Given our scale, our size, and our presence, we definitely need to take it very seriously when we look at the concerns or interests expressed by governments, by society, and by the general public. In that context, we are keenly aware that it is simply something we must be doing to have proactive, transparent and constructive dialogues and conversations with the governments, with local communities and with our customers. This is exactly what we have been doing. I can briefly introduce our actions and our plans in this area. Take security, for example. Many people have expressed concerns or interests in this area. For Huawei, we take security as our highest priority and our overarching guideline. In 2011, this positioning of security as our highest priority and overarching guideline was recognized in the form of a board resolution. That was the open letter released by our founder and CEO, Mr. Ren, addressed to the world, showing and demonstrating our serious commitment to security. Following that positioning and the resolution, we have taken very solid steps and measures internally and externally. For example, internally, cyber security guarantee and protection have been built and 7 Ken Hu's International Media Roundtable implemented across our business operations from corporate governance, organizational structure, technology innovation, staff management, and IT systems as well. I believe Sean Yang in the morning may have introduced some of those to you. Externally, when we engage with customers, regulators and the general public, we have been following a strategy or approach that we call "make white whiter" over the last 10-plus years. In other words, we understand the concerns from our customers or regulators. Therefore, we are willing to take additional steps or go the extra mile compared to other peers in our industry.